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Asked by bethx1 to Ed, Katie, Sam, Steve, Vera on 18 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by safia123, kiranminhas.
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Vera Weisbecker answered on 16 Jun 2011:
They are actually still around – birds are real fair dinkum dinosaurs. They are not that distantly related to things like T-rex and Velociraptor from Jurassic Park, but have of course changed a lot since they split off those rather large cousins.
Something dinosaur – like could definitely re-evolve from a different group – crocodiles for example, who are something like the cousins of dinosaurs. However, the genetically exact same thing as the large extinct dinosaurs won’t show up again because the actual ancestors (the “parent group”) of the dinosaurs are now extinct.
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Sam Tazzyman answered on 16 Jun 2011:
Also the conditions under which the dinosaurs evolved the first time have disappeared – the Earth is very different now from what it was like then. So I don’t think it is very likely that dinosaurs will re-evolve.
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Ed Morrison answered on 16 Jun 2011:
As Vera says, birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs. But it you mean the old fashioned diplodocus sort of thing, then probably not. I can’t think of any case we know of where an animal has gone extinct then re-evolved. Evolution doesn’t tend to repeat its history exactly.
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Katie Marriott answered on 16 Jun 2011:
Some brilliant answers there already. Not my expertise so I would’t have known!
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Steven Daly answered on 18 Jun 2011:
I think it is interesting how it is becoming more well known that a lot of dinosaurs probably had feathers. this shows just how related to birds dinosaurs were. I can’t look at chickens the same.
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kirstysargeant commented on :
wow